


A Promise Kept

by KorrohShipper



Series: Project Peggy [3]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Episode: s01e08 Valediction, F/M, Hurt, Postcards, Steggy - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:27:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22184068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KorrohShipper/pseuds/KorrohShipper
Summary: "Goodbye, my darling."OrWhere Peggy couldn't keep up her end of the deal and gives Steve the next best thing she could.
Relationships: Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers
Series: Project Peggy [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1424209
Kudos: 27





	A Promise Kept

**Author's Note:**

> Final installment to Project Peggy. This draft has been sitting on my phone for the better half of last year. Only had the time and courage to edit it. Anyways, enjoy!

Peggy found that she could not sleep, even the night’s tranquility could not afford her a moment’s peace.

In her bed, she twisted and turned, the image of Mr. Jarvis handing her a red vial still burned into her mind. Her heart raced and her blood still boiled at the thought of people making profit and gaining from using Steve, from betraying his trust—friend or foe.

A small part of her still felt wronged, feeling like a marionette whose stings were greased with blood money, money that Howard stood to make off from Steve.

But that was before, before she realized the true love and admiration Howard held for Steve.

What searing white fury that blinded her vision before, the intensity something she’s never felt not even in the wake of Steve’s sacrifice or her brother’s death, subsided into a mellow glow.

Peggy felt her breathing slow and calm down. Her racing and palpitating hear, at the thought of Steve, dialed down.

Cheeks ran wet with tears, she couldn’t forget who they were before the end of the war. So much promise was held in the future for them, the three of them. It was ironic, laughable even that only in war did she find peace. But then, she realized belatedly with a crushing weight on her chest, that Steve was the man who held them together—her and Howard and their band of misfit heroes traipsing across Europe—the binding agent that glued them in unity.

The logical side of her mind piped up and shut down the idea of ousting Howard. He was her oldest and dearest friend, an ally who stood in her corner despite being a bloody wanker. The more emotional part of her spoke from a deeper understanding that she would betray everything Steve stood for if she would breathe down an unholy hell on Howard’s neck.

She would be no better than the lowlife scums Steve faced in his life.

A shudder came over her and pushed away the darker thoughts. _No_ , she held herself tight in her own arms, wishing, for a moment, to feel someone else. _You are not a bully_ , she willed herself to hear her own voice even if she desperately wanted to hear his.

A flurry of panic then flooded her. She could only hear her voice—her eyes widened, she had forgotten his voice.

How long, a shaky whisper asked in her ear, would it take to forget his face?

His eyes, or that lopsided smile?

The image of his face would soon fade from her memory—she would lose him a second time.

As quickly as she can, she scrambled out of the linens and sheet of her bed and made her way towards the cupboard. Her fingers frantically skimmed through articles hidden inside the cabinet until—finally, she breathes to herself—her finger tapped against a wooden box hidden by the edge.

With a grunt, she pulled it out. The footlocker has seen better days. Dust had long claimed the surface. No matter how sturdy the material it was made out of, Peggy still held on to the edges of the box with a gingerly care.

As if it would crumble in her fingers and fade into oblivion.

She let her feet drift back to bed, the lamp now dimly lighting the room with a warm glow. Her fingers shook with a surprising tremor. An ache blossomed in her chest as Peggy smiled sadly if not fondly at the box. It’s been a long time, after all.

“There you go, my darling.”

It’s been more than a year since she last had the courage to set her eyes upon Steve’s footlocker, let alone hold it in her hands. But her breath hitched in her throat and hurriedly—but gently—lifted the lid off the box and was greeted by the musky, dusty, scent of the box that held, in the tiniest sense, a hint of Steve.

His dress uniform was still folded neatly upon the side. The medals he had accumulated sat atop the olive green and she could almost imagine his nonchalant shrug and dismissive smile—he never did care for the medals, shiny decorations, is what he called them.

At first, her hands hesitated to touch his items. Like the first time she was given Steve’s belongings, it felt wrong for a multitude of reasons.

The first was the most optimistic of all—Steve would return home, drenched in the ice cold waters of the arctic and inconceivably late for a gentleman, but he would be there. Her mind, in that perfect world’s scenario, would reason that he would have wanted his belongings to be kept to itself, that no one would rummage through the little material possessions he had in life. That there would be no reason to look after one man’s items because he would come back and the world will be alright.

He’d take it from her arms, as well a kiss from her lips. “ _You’re holding on to this for nothing._ ” Steve would grin at her, that same charm he held the day they drove to Brooklyn for Project Rebirth.

But it wasn’t like that. Steve’s gone and he’s dead, his body never to be recovered as the sea has claimed him for itself. His life commemorated by the corporate giants who mistake his kindness, passion, and generosity as their personal well to a fortune. Or, at best, the aloof and often too stoic and cold statues erected in his honor—though, in Peggy’s personal opinion, they could never truly capture the Steve she knew, the man she held in her heart.

The second one was a tad bit darker, certainly more grim. It was a dead man’s belongings, what business did she have holding on to it?

That little box held his life but at the same time, not at all. It was empty and the idea of opening the box, the little part of this earth that was his was nauseatingly wrong to systematically go through a dead man’s possessions. A sickening crunch erupted from her stomach as she realized that’s what Steve is now—a dash in a line, a number in the figures, a statistic and all that’s left of him has been categorized into meaningless data.

Peggy felt like a vulture, scavenging through the bits and pieces of his life just for her to keep feeling alive.

In a way, she was no different from those big corporations who seek only to gain from Steve. She was keeping herself alive with this material aliveness trapped in that box with no real way to move on because she could not find anything else that would suffice.

It kept her alive, knowing he would be there to remind her, constantly, that even though the world only knew of that swashbuckling, damsel-in-distress saving, stoic Captain America that the bloody radio programme kept getting wrong, she would hold his true essence in her midst—the well-meaning but bumbling kid from Brooklyn who’s far too good and pure for this world.

The same man who wouldn’t dance because he’s yet to meet his right partner.

But no matter how dark and vulnerable the second scenario was, the third was decided the worst of many reasons. Her lips wobbled, her eyes zeroing back to the uniform. They were all she had of him.

The clothes, sketch pads with pages that would never be filled, paperbacks that were dogeared and never to be read by him again, they were all that she has of him. Everything else was sequestered by the government, any true glimpse of his character and his mission, what he stood for, was locked away by the Secrets Act. In a few years, when the mourning has washed over and lives have passed, when there is nothing left to embody him but the watered down imaginations of his exploits in comics and radio programmes made to kill a modicum of her intelligence with every second of its run, he’ll be just that—a hero painted in the image of cartoonists, the writers, and the corporations who think they own the idea and being of him.

Peggy fears, the more she depends on the footlocker, the more she will be resigned to the fact that she alone will carry the burden of knowing who Steve Rogers is. That he will exist then, when she is old and frail, only in her memory.

But those reasons, good or bad, at the moment of confessed weakness, are not enough to dissuade her from grasping the folded dress uniform in her hands as she held it up against her face. Eyes shut, trying to remember the man who once wore those threads.

She felt herself come undone with a throaty, guttural sob that wracked her chest. Peggy hated how affected she is, but she couldn’t bring herself to regret her love for him. Slowly, she tore herself from the uniform and gingerly placing it back in the box and took, instead, a sketchbook.

Peggy had seen him sketch, once at the USO show in Italy. She had seen him sketch the 107th, too, the Commandos as they grinned, or the stolen glances he took as he captured them in the pages of his sketchbook. And no matter how many times she’s opened his sketchbook, no matter how many times she’s prepared herself for the moment, she would still freeze at the sight of her own face looking up at her.

There, sketches ranged from the detailed smudge of her makeup to the rough but unmistakable form, to one of her hair flying wildly as she held in her hand a gun, marching beyond the enemy lines.

The sketchbooks, which were piled in a separate corner, repeated the same pattern and Peggy felt her eyelids grew heavy. Long has her heart calmed down and her mind, once more, can conjure the image of Steve Rogers.

Now, he felt whole and unfading.

A breath of relief escaped her. “Thank you, my darling— _oh_!” her fingers trailed off to the edge of one cover and had ripped the fibers of the cover apart.

Her immediate thought was to repair it, make sure the sketch book was to remain as pristine until her sleepy eyes, with the help of the light, spotted pieces of numerous thin paper etched in between.

Curious, Peggy held the sketchbook by the side and turned it upside down, tapping its edges so its contents would fall out—and a part of Peggy, as she held it, wished they hadn’t.

Her eyes caught a familiar silhouette and cleared the rest of the postcards and lifted it up.

A teary laugh escaped her, remembering the conversation she had with him in Paris, after liberating the city. On the postcard, he had sketched two people—a woman, whose lips wore a tinge of red, and a man who appeared to be drawing—conversing in a park and in the distance was the Eiffel tower, standing proudly as a testament to the newly won freedom of its countrymen.

“ _Nuh-uh_ , _can't see it yet_ ,” he shook his head, his eyes twinkling in the sun. “ _You’ll see it when it’s ready. Besides, it’s part of a set._ ”

" _One day. After the war, I'll show you the postcards. And you've got to give me something in return, too._ "

Peggy quickly placed down the postcard and her eyes flickered through the rest. Her eyes caught the blue tones of the Mediterranean waters. She held it up and laughed in response.

Steve and the Howling Commandos had been loaned to the 92nd Infantry Division to help with the Italian Resistance. Their mission, as it turned out, was a massive success. They had marched all the way up to Rome with the 92nd Infantry until they were recalled back when a sudden tip on Hydra-manufactured weapons were being shipped out.

The postcard featured the Mediterranean sea, blue and the breeze pulling the waves in and out. Peggy closed her eyes and while the lamp was a poor substitute for the sun, the glow of it hit her just right and she felt like she was back in the shoreline with Steve.

It had been a long and tiring day, and they were to ship out to Germany in the early hours of morning.

She found Steve at the beach, the sun beginning to embark on its descent and disappear into the horizon. Her heart tugged at the memory of Steve, smiling at the ocean’s breeze, a notebook in hand.

He told her, when she sat beside him on a sizable boulder by the sand, that his mother was often away at the hospital working odd hours to make ends meet.

Peggy remembered saying, wondering out loud if his childhood was a lonely one but he gave her a smile—Bucky, he replied as if it answered everything.

And it did—the Barnes family had always looked for him. They were thick as thieves, Steve and Sgt. Barnes. And the bond they shared seemed to have transcend and melted into the entire family.

During a particularly bad bout of pneumonia, Mrs. Barnes—“Ma Winnie, I called her.”—she took him to the beach, thinking that the ocean’s air would do him good.

Her fingers still cradled the postcard in her hands. The colors remaining vibrant, the ocean’s crisp blue that reflected the orange-tinted sky. Peggy stared at the little sketch and gently pressed it to her chest, right above where her heart was.

Then, a band of cream caught her eye. While the rest of the postcards were messily scrambled atop her bed, a numbered few kept together, bound by a strip of yellowed paper.

On the strip, in the familiar drawn out lines of Steve’s handwriting read, “Project Peggy”.

Curiously, she took away the band and noticed, immediately, Liberty Island. The postcards she had skimmed through were familiar, because she was there with Steve, but she had never been to the island.

Thought, there was this one time, where upon a confession that she’s yet to visit America and see the true sights, that he promised to take her there one day, and the postcard showed them doing just that—gazing at the statue.

“FIRST TOUR” one word stood out against the green pigment of the grass.

She flipped through another. Like the first one, the postcard in her hands was something she’s never done with him before and yet something they’ve always talked about. The lightness in the first watercolor was gone, replaced by a deeper, darker but glowing piece.

It was a dancehall, deep colors of brown wooden paneling and red curtains and the warm lights. In the middle of the drawing was her and Steve. They were dancing, swaying to whatever song he had in mind—“We’ll have the band play something slow.”—but in reality, they never went dancing.

In the drawing, they were. She was in her red dress, several seasons out of fashion, but she wore it. They pressed close, her mind half-conjured Barnes telling them to give space for the holy ghost.

Peggy imagined, for a moment, what it would be like, to dance with him. Slowly, the music filled her ears, soft and soft from the band. His hands would hover above her, not quite sure where to put him but she would silence his bumbling with a laugh, or maybe a kiss.

He would be surprised, his cheeks terribly red, but he would ask if it was alright to do it again. Steve would lean in, slowly about to close the distance between them—

But it never came. Peggy opened her eyes, a stray tear falling towards the edge of the postcard. It didn’t happen, dance or the kiss at the end of it. Not truly, not ever.

The new card she held featured herself at the SSR, her desk now inside an office instead of among the bullpen.

The next one was nothing short of a force of nature.

In the card, Steve was kneeling on the ground. He held in his hands a small box. A small dialogue box popped above Steve’s head: “Will you let me dance with you for the rest of your life?” just below it was the title of the post card.

“MY LAST QUESTION”

Her fingers swapped to the next postcard, not truly able to formulate the words until the realization hit her with an astounding force. Peggy sharply breathed in. There was a recurring theme within the bundle of cards—they weren’t just promises or places they were supposed to go to it was of their lives, what could be of their lives.

The lives they could have lead.

It was a series of postcards, a series of illustrations she wanted nothing more than to make a reality, she would have given anything to have, even if it’s just for a moment.

Her eyes caught the first postcard. The very first one she saw him sketch that day in Paris. The one where she had to stop herself from smiling because he thought she didn’t know that he was sketching her.

“You know, my dad, he served in the Great War. 107th, too. And wherever he was stationed, he’d bring back a postcard. Ma’s kept them all and whenever I’d look at them, I’d promise myself to visit these places when I get the chance—to travel the world.”

Peggy stared at the card in her hand. Steve had told her he would show it once he was finished, and how she’s seen it. Only, they had a deal.

“ _A deal, then. Show me the postcards and I’ll take you out dancing, yes_?”

And as much as she willed it, she could not bring back a body lost to a watery grave nor can she teach a monument how to dance.

But an idea sparked in her mind, one that refused to quiet down the moment Mr. Jarvis handed her the vial.

Peggy got dressed and took the vial. She raced her way to the Brooklyn Bridge. The sun was at the horizon, sinking well into line. She paused, a short moment to take in all of Brooklyn. The city he loved so much he was willing to die for.

Peggy stood near the edge of the railing. From her pockets, she produced the vial and lifted the lid. The metallic scent of his blood wafted and it took all of her strength to tilt the vial down. Blood trickled from the mouth of the vial and dripped down into the water, the current pulling the waves in and out.

One day, after many years, the ocean and its currents would have brought Steve all around New York, and soon, the world.

It may not have been the way he wanted to travel the world, but at least now he was free. A part of him was able to come home to Brooklyn and soon, when he’s ready, he would travel the world. She may not have had the opportunity to teach Steve how to dance like how she promised—and she accepts, with a heavy heart, like with the future he laid out with the postcards, that she never will—she may not have held up her end of the deal, but she would protect him.

Even if it was only in death, at least she would be able to protect him now.

At least, as the sun sets on the horizon, slowly disappearing beyond the line that divided the ocean and the sky, she would set him free, he would travel the world as he always wanted.

She may not have taught him how to dance. She would never teach him how. But he was fine, now, free and about to embark on a journey that would be his and his alone. He would be gone, yes, the only remaining part of him lost to her forever, but at least—in some way—she had held up her end of the deal, even if it was a dance he would only do himself.

With tears pricking her eyes, the blood stopped trickling and the vial grew light.

“Goodbye, my darling.”


End file.
